


Thornfeather

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Non-standard Soulmarks, Soulmarks, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-07 22:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6828493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam thought he had it all.  He had a great job, a brother who loved him, fulfilling hobbies, a loyal and loving dog, and a fiancée who agreed that while soulmates were probably nice, they weren’t necessary to make a marriage work.  After all, with globalization and the mobility of people in today’s society, the chances of meeting your soulmate were drastically reduced.</p><p>Then Amelia met her soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by thoughts on Tumblr, musing about the actual societal implications of soulmate AUs. The post was thoughts about a soulmate AU where the first words you hear from your soulmate are marked on your skin.
> 
> Some of the thoughts jumped out at me, and that's where this story came from.  
> \- Imagine being the person left behind by someone you love and trust because of words on their skin.  
> \- Imagine how broken you would feel if you were asexual/aromantic and you didn’t have words.  
> \- Imagine having words that you hated. Imagine having words on your skin that were a slur or an insult or a threat and knowing that someday you will meet someone who will say that to you and they are someone you are supposed to love.
> 
> I ended up changing these, because instead of using words, my 'verse uses pictures. And while Dean is aro, he does have a soulmark, it just doesn't belong with a person.

Sam knew it would be a bad day when he came home to find Amelia there. Despite his tendencies to stay late at the office, Amelia never beat him home. Her work kept her late, too, checking on the various animals boarding at her clinic. Sure, it meant that they didn’t eat dinner until 9:00 unless they broke down and got takeout, but that was okay.

But today, not only was Amelia home, she’d set the table and was obviously ready to serve dinner whenever Sam got settled in. Either Sam had forgotten something incredibly important, or Amelia was incredibly nervous about something. Mental checklist: not his birthday, not her birthday, not their anniversary, not Christmas – he’d forgotten that one their first year together, and she never let him forget it. Not a family member’s birthday or Riot’s birthday or anything related to any graduations or hirings… if he’d forgotten something, he had well and truly forgotten it.

Amelia brought in the chicken casserole. One look at her told Sam it was her being nervous. “Hey, honey. How was your day?”

“It was…” Amelia searched for words. “Weird. How was yours?”

“Crazy. Three different judges contacted me to ask me to serve as the court-appointed attorney for a case, all within half an hour of each other. I spent most of the day reviewing the cases, and all three of them are good fits for me,” Sam said. “I’m having a little trouble deciding how to handle that, three cases spreads me too thin to serve any of them responsibly, but I can't decide which one or ones to pass on.”

“Do you know how proud I am that you’re the kind of lawyer who feels bad about turning down court-appointed cases and only does it when you honestly feel you can’t give them the attention they deserve?” Amelia asked. Sam did know. He didn’t think it was that big a deal – he’d become a defense attorney to help people, after all.

“Someone has to help them,” was all he said. “This is really good, Amelia. What’s the occasion?”

Amelia set her fork down and took a long breath. “Sam… I… like I said, today was a weird day. And, well, I can’t quite figure out how to tell you about it.”

“So you cooked dinner…?” Sam said.

Amelia twisted the ring on her left hand, the one Sam had bought her when they agreed to marry each other despite the reasons they shouldn’t. “I wasn’t getting anything done at work. I can cook Grandma’s chicken casserole in my sleep, I can’t fill out charts and reports on my patients when I can’t concentrate. I…” She cut off and looked down at her hands, realizing what she was doing and forcing herself to stop. It wasn’t long before she was rubbing her left shoulder, instead.

That was the clue Sam needed to figure out what had happened, and suddenly, his appetite was gone. Amelia’s left shoulder was where her mark had manifested when she celebrated her first birthday. She’d always said she didn’t put much stock in soulmarks. Maybe in the past, when people weren’t as migratory as they were now, they’d made sense. But now, the chances of finding your soulmate were probably worse – in the 1800s, someone in Indiana was unlikely to have a soulmate from Georgia, let alone from Sweden or Japan or Kenya. In this century, though, there was no reason your soulmate couldn’t be halfway around the world, and the chances of running into them were really low.

Sam didn’t put much stock in soulmarks either. After all, according to his brother’s, Dean’s soulmate and true love was a car. Not that Sam couldn’t see the point, Dean loved his Impala a little more than was entirely healthy, but he’d practically been born in the car. It had been home for years, and when their father had handed over the title, it was only making official what the entire family had known since before Dean could actually pronounce "Impala".

Amelia and Sam met in college. They’d become friends, and when they realized they were both living in the same city five years later, they’d renewed their friendship. This time, romance had bloomed, and they started dating. Sure, a lot of people disapproved, saying that they should be looking for their soulmates instead. But they’d both agreed that what they had was better than the hands their parents had been dealt – Sam’s father raised him and Dean alone after his mom died, knowing that he’d never have what he’d found with Mary again; Amelia’s father had raised her alone after her mother refused to get help for her problems and he’d decided to prioritize his daughter over his soulmate.

But now, obviously… “Who is he?” Sam asked, setting down his fork.

Amelia looked a little surprised, but dropped her head. “His name’s Don Richardson. He came into the clinic today with a dog – he’d hit the dog because he was driving distracted – and stuck around to make sure that the dog would be okay. When I came out to tell him the dog would pull through, I just… I could feel it.”

“Yeah? That’s… wow,” Sam said. “What are the chances?”

“I know, right? He’s on a road trip, he lives in Texas and just got out of the army!” Amelia wiped away a tear. “Sam, I’ve promised you a lot. And I’ll honor those promises, I will. I told Don that I was engaged, and he took it reasonably well. I just thought you should know. I didn’t… if you still want me, I’ll stay here.”

Sam was torn. He loved Amelia. He did. And they’d been good together. But now, it didn’t feel right anymore. Amelia loved him, but she was meant for someone else, and now they knew who that someone else was. They’d always known this was a possibility, but they’d never actually thought it would happen.

“Amelia. You… things have been great, this past year. Better than I ever thought I’d have. But I don’t think things can work like this,” Sam said. He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I know you’d stay, if I asked you to. But you’ll always know that you have a soulmate out there, not just some hypothetical person who maybe might cross your path one day, but a guy with a name and a history and a job and a dog. Any time things got bad with us, you’d always wonder if it would be better with him, and that’s not fair to me. And asking you to settle for good enough when you can have what you’re meant to, that’s not fair to you. I don’t think I could live with the guilt of you giving up that chance for me. I appreciate your honesty and your willingness to honor your commitment to me, but the right thing to do here is for me to set you free and tell you to go be happy.”

Amelia was fully crying now. “Sam… I’m so sorry. I never thought anything like this would ever happen, honestly.”

“I know. I didn’t, either. And it could just as easily have been me. Don’t beat yourself up about it, this isn’t your fault, Amelia. I hope things work out for you and Don.” Sam squeezed her hand again, then let it go and got up. “I’ll get a few things and go stay with Dean tonight, move out properly this weekend if I can.”

“Sam… you don’t have to…” Amelia started to protest.

“It’s going to happen eventually, may as well be now,” Sam said with a shrug. “It’s not like I’m going to a hotel or something, you know Dean will be perfectly happy to let me stay until I find a new place of my own.”

 

“You know you can stay here as long as you want, right?” Dean said when Sam explained why he was showing up on Dean’s porch at 10 pm looking for a bed for the night.

Sam managed a chuckle. “Yeah, I know, but…”

“But nothing. If having me around too much is a problem, me and Baby can spend some more time on the road, she’s been feeling a little neglected anyway,” Dean promised. “I know you’re a big boy and you don’t need your big brother, but I honestly like having you around.”

Even after all this time, it still weirded Sam out the way Dean talked about his car sometimes. Sure, it was, technically, his soulmate. That didn’t make it a person, and a car didn’t have feelings. Not that he'd ever said anything like that to Dean since he was fourteen and Dean had decided that fourteen was old enough to well and truly beat the crap out of. “You don’t have to go anywhere, Dean. You’re a great housemate and you’re wrong, I do need my big brother. I’ll always need my big brother.”

“So, Don, huh? Always said you could never trust a guy named Don,” Dean said. Sam shot him a bitchface, and Dean just laughed at him. “Look, I know you loved her, so I’m gonna hate Amelia for you. Deal with it.”

“It’s not her fault, not really,” Sam said.

“Maybe not. And you loved her and you’re a good guy so you aren’t gonna blame her, but that doesn’t mean she gets to be exempt from the consequences of breaking my little brother’s heart,” Dean said. “What are you gonna do now?”

“Stay busy at work, hang out with the Colonel when I’m home, pretty much the same thing I was doing before except coming home to my brother instead of my fiancée,” Sam said. Put that way, it didn’t really sound so bad. “Check into apartments and stuff.”

“Sam. I mean it. Stay here with me where I can feed you and there’s a dog to play with and you ain’t coming home to an empty, soulless apartment,” Dean said. “I know you can take care of yourself, but I can do it better and you know it.”

“Dean, I’ll stay at least for a while,” Sam promised. “But I don’t want to freeload on you. You gotta let me…”

Dean rolled his eyes and laughed. “Sammy, you know your name’s on my bank account, if it’s gonna bother you that much you can put money in there. I don’t need it. The garage is doing great and aside from taking care of Baby I don’t really spend much. Anything you give me’s gonna end up going back to you one way or another. So do whatever you want.”

 

Living with Dean again was great. He protested, but he and Dean both knew that he really did love that Dean cooked him breakfast and would call and yell at him to get his ass home if he got caught up at work. “You know, Dean? Why couldn’t you have been my soulmate?”

“That’d be a little weird,” Dean said. “And yet, not as weird as what we actually got.”

“I know. You got your car, and I got…” Sam shook his head. “I don’t even know.”

“Course you don’t, you haven’t met her,” Dean said. “Or him. Or it. Or whatever.”

“Yeah, but…” Sam started, rubbing his left leg idly.

“But nothing. It’s just a mark. It don’t mean crap other than it’s supposed to tell you when you’ve met your soulmate,” Dean said. “You’ve seen my mark, and it’s got nothing to do with Baby. It’s not even the right color.”

Sam disagreed. He’d taken a couple classes on soulmark theory in college, and Dean’s mark seemed fairly straightforward. Two parallel bright red lines around three pale blue dots. Bright red was typically associated with aggression, but horizontal lines were a symbol of love, and a horizontal red line was, literally, a textbook definition of protectiveness. A circle was representative of a basic need, and pale blue was the color of peace – the blue dots probably represented a sense of home. So Dean’s soulmate mark indicated something that Dean could consider home, a place that he felt protected and could be at peace. And if that didn’t describe how Dean felt about his car, then Sam would forfeit his high school diploma.

Sam’s mark, on the other hand, was a lot more complicated. He had a blood-red thorned vine wrapped around a black rod topped with a black bird shedding feathers. The only thing he could come up with to explain it was that his soulmate hated him. Its location, on his left thigh, wasn’t exactly helping matters. It certainly made it difficult to show people.

“You know, this thing with Amelia… I’m curious now,” Sam admitted. “I’m sure I’ll regret it, but I’m thinking about starting an active search.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t want to know. Thought you believed your mark was a curse.”

“I don’t, and I do believe that,” Sam said. “But Amelia… as much as she hated telling me about it, I could see how happy she was that she’d found Don. And hey, if it’s just a mark and all… maybe my soulmate’s a great person after all, right? And I’m just being a superstitious goof by trying to ignore it all.”

“What are you gonna do, then? How do you even start?” Dean asked.

Sam thought for a bit, trying to remember what he’d learned in school. “I know there are websites, dating sites have soulmark stuff, there’s speedchatting… or I could hire an Angel.”

“An angel?” Dean scoffed. “Right, because I’m sure they’re more useful than their heavenly counterparts.”

“Hey, the profession wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have some success,” Sam said. “And even if the soulmark matching is all bunk, there’ve gotta be other ways they work, right?”

“Your money, just don’t go getting your hopes too high on an angel,” Dean said. “Any idea how to find a reasonably good one?”

“Same way you find a good anything – research and reviews,” Sam said. He pulled out his laptop. “I may have to figure out how to research, but that’s no big deal.”


	2. Angel of Solitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most Angels were romantics, or at least true believers in soulmark theory. Castiel Santos... wasn't. While he felt he couldn't deny the existence of soulmates, he didn't necessarily believe the marks were the best guide. Sure, he used them. He kept current with the theories and the research and used them in his searches, but the reason he was so good is that he put less emphasis on soulmarks and actually spent time going through correspondence and profiles.
> 
> He didn't need the money. He needed the challenge. And this latest client promised to be a big one.

Castiel leaned back in his chair, considering the email from a prospective client. At the moment, he didn’t have much to do. Most of the potential clients who contacted him were bad fits for one reason or another, usually the simplicity of their case. Most Angels would take them anyway, since it wasn’t exactly the steadiest of paychecks, but Castiel didn’t need the money. He was in this for the challenge. He only took cases where he felt his skill was required, and only took the money when he could deliver results, charging based on what his clients could afford and what he felt his effort deserved. Most of the time, it meant he ended up losing money, but that was all right.

This client was intriguing enough for him to look into a little. He freely admitted that he wasn’t sure the whole thing wasn’t bullshit, and that he wasn’t expecting to meet his soulmate and find out that his life was now magically awesome.

_Dear Angel of Solitude,_

_I’m interested in help finding my soulmate, and I am looking for advice and assistance in the search. I’m not your typical client, I imagine. My brother thinks the business of analyzing soulmarks is a waste of time and money, and I’m not sure I disagree with him. I’ve started researching, and the one thing I’m sure of is that I could use professional help in figuring out what’s worth investing time and effort into and what’s worthless._

_Your website says that you charge based on results. I don’t expect much in that regard. I’ve lived this long without my soulmate and it’s been a great life so far. If you don’t find what I’m looking for, I’m willing to compensate you for your effort and expenses anyway. It’s not a financial burden on me, and I don’t like the thought of you wasting your time on my behalf._

_As requested, I’ve attached a photograph of my mark and an indication of its location, along with the basic profile. If you have questions or require more information, let me know and I will get you answers as quickly as possible. Good luck._

That in itself was enough to interest Castiel enough to click on the photograph. The mark itself is what convinced him that he would be taking the case – after a quick exchange with the client.

_Dear Prospective Client,_

_I have received your email and picture. My initial impression is that this is a case I’m willing to take on, but I wanted to discuss one thing with you first._

_I agree that soulmark analysis is a remarkably squishy field, and I’m not entirely convinced of its validity. My own soulmark is one that seems to defy any kind of logical analysis. Everything about it seems to contradict another part of it, and I can only believe that my soulmate is either nonexistent or has one or more extreme mental disorders or neuro-atypicalities._

_That said, your soulmark has some very concerning aspects to it. The dark colors and motifs both indicate a darkness in your bond that you may not care to learn more about. The choice is yours, of course. If you want to look into it, then I will do everything I can to get you results._

_Angel of Solitude_

He didn’t expect to hear anything back that day, so he took the printout of the photograph and his laptop and went to meet his best friend. Balthazar was a part-time Angel and part-time bartender. He owned the bar, naturally. “Cassie!” Balthazar said when Castiel took a seat at a stool. “New client?”

“Perhaps,” Castiel said. He showed Balthazar the picture. It was a tradition – some Angels insisted on having every available scrap of information about their clients, but Castiel wanted as few identifying details as he could get away with. He never asked for a client’s name, gender identity, orientation, race, address, anything that he felt was irrelevant. Castiel felt that knowing those things were more likely to bias him against potential matches than to help him find the right one. Instead, he got Balthazar to give them code names based on their soulmarks.

Balthazar took the photograph and smirked. “Think this one’s yours? It’d take someone with the kind of issues your soulmate’s got to want to find the person who goes with this,” he said.

“Or who doesn’t believe in soulmark meanings,” Castiel pointed out. “Which the client doesn’t. Maybe. They’re not certain. If that were my soulmark, I wouldn’t believe either.”

“Well, Thornfeather’s exactly the kind of client you love,” Balthazar said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Now that he had a nickname for this client, he began making a list of features to examine. The first two were the ones Balthazar had pulled out – thorns and feathers. Thorns were likely easy – they indicated sharpness, which often manifested verbally. Sarcasm, insults, that sort of thing. They could also indicate a person who had a short temper, who was easily irritated. Feathers were trickier. Usually they meant something soft. In this case, though, the feathers were falling from the bird, which could mean a shedding of softness. The problem there was that there wasn’t any softness anywhere else in the mark.

The colors were also obvious. Red, of course, was an aggressive color. It wasn’t the bright red typically associated with outward violence. A darker red usually indicated that the aggression was less overt, more internal. The most obvious explanation, combined with the thorns and the vine, was that Thornfeather’s soulmate would hold him to impossibly high standards – the vine representing an attempt to reach something high – and would become verbally or emotionally abusive at Thornfeather’s continued failure to meet those standards.

Black was complicated. It usually represented darkness, but it could also represent solidity, mystery, evil, a million other things. The black rod seemed to represent some kind of core. Possibly iron, which would be a sign of strength. Thornfeather’s soulmate was a strong person, but one who was easily provoked, perhaps. A black bird could be a raven, which symbolized intelligence, or a crow, which symbolized evil, or a blackbird, which usually meant that they were secretive. Or possibly all of them at once.

Body location was something Castiel was less interested in – it usually had more to do with the chances of finding a soulmate rather than saying anything about the person or their soulmate. Thornfeather’s placement was interesting, though. Usually, marks were on shoulders or upper arms or lower legs – not obvious, but easy enough to show to others. Being on the thigh, however, meant that Thornfeather’s soulmark was meant to be hidden. Castiel had read a theory once that indicated that a hidden soulmark required a lot more reading into than an obvious one. He’d never actually tested the theory, but if it were true, then he couldn’t trust the obvious explanation of his client’s mark.

What Castiel had at the moment: he was looking for a person who was strong, secretive, and intelligent, who was easily provoked and tended to resort to sarcasm and stinging remarks when irritated. He was absolutely certain there were more layers to dig into, but for now, what he had was good enough to create a general search. Balthazar came and looked over his shoulder as he started programming his requests into the websites. “You know… I was joking earlier, but you’re describing yourself there, Cassie.”

“I’m also working on very little information,” Castiel said dryly. “I feel rather confident in saying you’re not their soulmate, but I wouldn’t make any kind of definitive statement that someone is. I’m sure I’ll be eliminated as a suspect quickly.”

“I don’t know,” Balthazar said, but he backed off. “Your client, your job. Good luck.”

 

It was aggravating, sometimes, when Balthazar was right. Castiel had profiles on all the major sites. It wasn’t that he believed he’d ever find his non-existent soulmate, it’s just that putting up his own profile had given him practice and insight into how to create profiles and what to search for to match up with others’ profiles. Castiel couldn’t pretend to be surprised that his profile came back as a match to Sam’s mark on the first site he checked. By the fifth, when his was one of three that were matched on all five, he was a little irked. When he was done with the seven sites he liked to use in his first pass, that was down to two 100% matches – his and another.

Castiel liked to start with the 100% matches. He set his own profile aside, though, to focus on the other one. This profile looked like a strong contender, and he made several notes of things to follow up on with his client. He noted several similarities between it and the five- or six-site matches – the client tended to match up with people with oddball senses of humor and military backgrounds, particularly if the prospective match had rebelled against it.

He could hear Balthazar. “Oh, so you mean like the way you told your father to shove it when he wanted you to go career Air Force.” Castiel had gone to college on an ROTC scholarship and paid back his four years, and then told his superior officers to go fly a kite when they tried to pressure him to stay. Including his own father.

An alert from his phone drew Castiel away. He had an email from his client.

_Dear Angel of Solitude,_

_I know. My soulmark is incredibly disturbing. For most of my life, I’ve tried to ignore it. I was all set to marry a woman who agreed with us that soulmarks are overrated – and then she found her soulmate. She broke my heart, and I know it broke hers to do it. I don’t want to be on the other end of that, but I can’t keep my life in a holding pattern, either. So I figure the worst that happens is I find my soulmate, confirm that my soulmate is a giant bag of dicks – although I hope not literally, but I've seen weirder, so who knows – and I can get on with my life finding some random person who’s lost their soulmate or whatever and not having to worry about hurting them the way I got hurt. Or I can know that one of the best Angels out there, according to the Internet, couldn’t find my soulmate, so the chances of stumbling across them are even tinier than I originally thought. Or, long shot but it could happen, my soulmate’s a decent person and we’ll actually be happy together._

_The Client With the Thorns and Feathers Tattoo_

Castiel couldn’t help the laugh. If Balthazar was right, it wouldn’t be a terrible thing other than trying to figure out how in the world to explain that. This client had a great sense of humor, and was clearly intelligent. He turned his attention to the longer shots, looking for people who might have been left out of the initial pass through the hits just because of failure to put profiles on the other sites and looking for those who were legitimately left out on those other sites. He could learn from both of those to help him refine his search.

The ones who were left out would show reasons for being left out. Sometimes, that would be on his client’s end – his client was the type to spend long hours at work, and the prospective match was looking for someone more focused on home, for instance. Or his client wasn’t big on family gatherings and the prospective match was, or his client put his brother before just about everything and the prospective match wouldn’t appreciate the brother coming before work or their bond. Sometimes it was on his client’s end. One prospect who appeared good was apparently eliminated on the basis of hating dogs. Another was eliminated, as near as Castiel could figure, because of a religious conflict. It’s not that his client minded religion or had a problem with atheism. His client had a problem with dogmatism, with someone who believed so strongly that they weren’t open to other viewpoints. Castiel could sympathize.

He wrote up a profile to send to his client, along with explanations and a request for feedback. This was always a nervewracking step in his process. Several times, his clients would be rather offended by something in his report and terminate the hunt. And it’s not like the profile he was sending out was the easiest to accept. There were a lot of character flaws in there.

The response the next day was, once again, prompt and unexpected. The client responded thoughtfully, point by point, either agreeing with Castiel’s analysis or offering a possible alternative explanation for data. It’s not that Castiel hadn’t known his client was a lawyer, but seeing it in action was, he had to admit, rather impressive.

With the feedback in hand, he turned back to the soulmark. Looking closer, he thought he could see a strange, thorny beauty to it. The secretive, intelligent bird was shedding its feathers. Maybe his client was the cause of the soulmate opening up, overcoming his darker impulses to become better. He got out a magnifying glass to examine the bird more closely, and sure enough, there was just a touch of a deep purple peeking out on the edges of the wings. Purple could be a color associated with sorrow, or grief – or nobility and honor. Computer analysis showed that the red of the vine shaded more purple as it got closer to the bird as well. A quest, a growth to a higher level, that made the soulmate a more noble person because of his client’s influence.

Once again, Balthazar’s voice was in the back of Castiel’s head. “You’re projecting there, a little, don’t you think, Cassie?” And maybe he was. But the purple was there. Just to be sure, though, he sent the pictures to Rachel, one of his favorite colleagues, for a second opinion. In the meantime, with his revised profile, he went back to his search through internet profiles. Different bank of websites, new results.

Although, to some extent, the same. Once again, Castiel found his own profile matching up every time. And once again, as he analyzed the results, the newly-clarified picture continued to be a mirror.

Rachel’s analysis came back after the fourth iteration of refinement and researching. Her analysis agreed with Castiel’s, and his profile of his client’s soulmate was starting to get very specific – and continued to match up with his own profile. Curious, he went to one of the few Angels he thought was better at the job than he was. “Gabriel. I’ve got a puzzle for you.”

“Hit me,” Gabriel said, setting aside his beer and candy.

“Two profiles and soulmarks I want you to double-check for me,” he said, handing over his client’s data and his own. Gabriel wasn’t familiar with Castiel’s soulmark, at least not identified as Castiel's, so he thought this was a fair test.

Gabriel took the data and looked at it briefly. “Wow, Cassie, you do find the weird ones, don’t you,” he said. “Obviously I haven’t put the work into this that you have, but looks to me like you’ve got a match here. What’s up? You’re normally not one to ask for confirmation.”

Castiel unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it aside to show Gabriel the soulmark on his right hip. “The other one belongs to a client of mine, as does the profile you matched to this.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up. “Your soulmate just happened to hire you as their Angel,” he said.

“Apparently,” Castiel said. “I’ve tried every trick I know to find a flaw in the match, and it’s held up every time. Now what do I do?”

“You tell your client you think you’ve found their soulmate, go meet them, and only after you know one way or the other do you tell them what you do for a living?” Gabriel said. “This is a really unusual situation, I have absolutely no idea what the ethics committee would say about it.”

Castiel sighed and looked at the client’s soulmark. “I can’t. It wouldn’t feel right.”

“Your call, but if they know you’re their Angel, how do you convince them to show up?” Gabriel asked. "Trust me, if you want to know..."

"I do want to know, but I don't want to antagonize my soulmate with a deception," Castiel argued. "I'd be willing to bet that Thornfeather would take it badly."

Gabriel's eyes lit up at the mention of a bet. "Usual stakes?"

Well, Castiel hadn't meant it literally, but after a moment's reflection he decided why not. "Yes. Usual stakes. For me to win, my client has to show up knowing the stakes and agree that they had the right to know beforehand. Fair?"

"Fair." Gabriel held out a hand and they shook on the deal. Castiel left to write one of the most difficult emails of his career.


	3. Meetup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam agrees to meet up with his Angel. Dean refuses to let him go alone.

It had been a week since Sam hired the Angel of Solitude to track his soulmate. He had no idea how quickly to expect results – whether a week was fast or slow. What he did know is that it had been a week, and there was an email in his inbox saying “I may have a result.”

_Dear Thornfeather,_

_I believe I have a candidate. This is going to be complicated, and I beg of you to bear with me and evaluate the evidence for yourself before you dismiss it. I’ve laid out my process, analysis, and reasoning for you to see, so that you can truly understand that I’m not just saying this lightly. You see, I believe that I may be your soulmate._

Sam stopped there and stared at his computer. This had to be some kind of ethics violation, didn’t it? And yet… he’d heard of lawyers finding their soulmates when a client walked in after hiring them over the internet. Teachers finding their soulmate when a student was assigned to their class. Doctors finding their soulmate when they met a new patient. Why couldn’t an Angel discover their soulmate by taking on a client?

And, well… Sam started reading the explanation. The Angel wasn’t wrong. It matched up, and it worked. He’d seen less thorough research and evidence presented in court for felonies. He examined his own soulmark – he’d never noticed the purple on the bird’s wings. But it was certainly there. Page after page of profiling, soulmark interpretation, even second opinions from colleagues.

“I swear, part of the reason I’m convinced is just how much effort this person put into their work to try to prove the theory wrong,” Sam admitted to Dean when he showed his brother the results. “Tell me that’s not exactly what I’d have done.”

“No, that’s exactly what you’d have done,” Dean said. “You gonna meet up, see if it pans out?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Yeah, I am. Even if they’re not my soulmate, no reason we can’t be friends, and you can see that we’d probably be good friends. It’s all right there.”

“I’m coming with you,” Dean said. He held up his hands. “Not gonna interfere unless you start screaming or something – and not in a sexy way, I am not getting anywhere near if it’s in a sexy way. I just wanna see who this person who thinks they’re my little brother’s soulmate is and make sure they understand some things.”

Sam rolled his eyes and huffed, but it was for show. He’d never admit it, but he loved his brother’s protectiveness of him. He was pretty sure Dean knew anyway. “Fine, whatever,” he said.

 

“So, who are we looking for?” Dean asked as he parked the Impala in the Starbucks parking lot.

“Uh…” Sam realized that he was kind of an idiot at that moment. “We’re looking for the only other person in the world who would agree to meet someone they’ve only met through email without asking for any kind of identifying information or agreeing on some kind of coded clothes or something. Now that I’m thinking about it, I just realized don’t even know if we’re looking for a dude or a chick.”

Dean stared at Sam in disbelief. “Wow. Sammy, you… just wow. That is… I don’t even have words to make fun of you right now.”

“I know, right?” Sam got out of the car and headed inside. As soon as he opened the door, he could feel something – an odd tingle in his leg, on his soulmark. He’d read about it often, so he knew what it meant. His soulmate was here. He met Dean’s eyes, and Dean knew, too. Dean went to place their orders while Sam looked around.

Even without knowing anything about what he was looking for, even as crowded as the Starbuck’s was, it didn’t take long for Sam to settle on someone to approach. There was a man sitting at a table for four with only one other person, and ignoring that other person to look around the shop like he was expecting someone.

He took a moment to appraise the two men. The one he thought was his soulmate was quite handsome – blue eyes, dark hair that looked like he’d forgotten to run a comb through it when he got out of bed, loose tie hanging backwards, rumpled trench coat. The other man was also handsome, but more calculated in his casual appearance – jeans, V-neck shirt, and a black jacket.

Sam approached the table and waited for them to notice him. “Hi. I’m Sam Winchester, and I’m looking for an angel.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized how it would sound. “I – I mean, a literal Angel. Like the profession. Not… that sounded way less weird in my head, I promise. I’m supposed to meet one…”

The blond man was laughing, but the guy Sam was actually interested in stood up. “Hello, Sam. As it happens, I’m an Angel who’s supposed to meet someone here. My name is Castiel Santos.” He took the hand Sam was holding out in both of his.

The moment their hands touched, they both knew. “Hello, Castiel. I’m glad you talked yourself into sending me that email.”

“I’m glad you kept an open enough mind to read it,” Castiel said. “This is my friend, Balthazar Keene. He wanted to make sure I had backup.”

“Only fair, I brought my brother, Dean. He’s getting our drinks.” Sam pointed him out before taking a seat at the table. “I have to ask, Castiel. You said you don’t exactly believe in this. So why’d you become an Angel? You could’ve done a lot of other things, I’m sure.”

“I don’t necessarily believe in soulmarks, but I do believe in helping other people to be happy,” Castiel said. “I thought about law school, medical school… my college and graduate work was in psychology. But I’m terrible at talking to people, so I had to find another way to put that to use.”

Balthazar was snickering, but Sam just grinned. “Makes sense to me. I can talk pretty well, if I’ve got an outline of a script, but throw me into small talk and I usually turn into either a sphinx or a stammering mess. Which is why I usually try to hide behind my brother.”

“Seem to be doing all right today,” Balthazar said.

“This is different. I had a basic script to get things started and a car ride to come up with some questions. And, well, it’s kind of a unique situation, isn’t it? I already know a lot about who Castiel is, and he knows me pretty well, too,” Sam said, tucking his hair back behind his ear.

“Settle a bet for us, then,” Balthazar said. “Our pal thought Cassie should’ve just sent you the match and only told you who he was later. Cassie thought that was a bad idea.”

“I’m with Cas,” Sam said. “It wouldn’t have been a lie, exactly, but it would’ve felt like a deception, and I don’t like false pretenses. And you’re an idiot, you never bet against someone’s soulmate when it comes to predicting how that person will react!”

Castiel’s turn to smirk. “I did try to tell them that. Now Gabriel owes me a pony.”

“A… pony?” Sam repeated as Dean came over with the coffees. He had to be misunderstanding something here.

“Gabriel is a bit… eccentric,” Castiel said. “When he’s not analyzing soulmarks or trying to burn down the world through the force of his pranks, he breeds and raises ponies. When he loses a bet, he gives the winner one of his ponies. This will be my fourth.”

“What do you do with the ponies?” Sam asked. This was just weird to him.

“Usually lose them back to Gabriel,” Castiel admitted. “Since it doesn’t matter to the pony who the owner is on paper, Gabriel and his stable does all the work raising them, training them, and keeping them, I don’t feel guilty about losing a pony to Gabriel. He doesn’t make these bets with people he doesn’t trust to take care of them or let him do it.”

Balthazar chuckled. "Me, for instance."

“So is that four all-time, or four currently?” Dean asked.

“Four currently. All-time depends how you count. There’s one that he calls Honeybee that I’ve won off him three times and lost back to him all three,” Castiel said. “I think I’ll ask for her this time. He said he wasn’t betting her again unless I kept her for real next time, but I think I’m willing to make that commitment now.”

“Oh dear lord,” Balthazar said. He looked over to Dean. “Kill me now so I don’t have to listen to the newfound soulmate talk.”

“No one forced you to come,” Cas said. “You can’t even say you weren’t properly warned. You knew why we were going and that I’m very good at what I do.”

“All right, there’s a good chance I’m gonna like him, Sammy,” Dean said. “But there’s a test, Cas. You gotta come meet my soulmate.”

“Just to be clear, you’re not testing my skills as an Angel but my character? You know who your soulmate is?” Castiel said.

Dean laughed. “You figured out his mess of a mark, and he showed me yours when he was trying to decide whether to come. I don’t need to test your professional skills. Come on, she’s right outside.”

“You made her wait outside…?” Cas had the worst what-the-fuck look Sam had ever seen as Dean led him off. Sam followed to watch the show, Balthazar at his heels.

“Here she is,” Dean said proudly, leaning against the Impala. “Been together since before I was born.”

“Ah. That explains why you left her outside,” Castiel said. “Dean, I’m afraid I don’t know much about cars, but I can tell that you love her enough to keep her running long past when most people would have traded her in or put her out to pasture. Not just running, I’m guessing.” He walked around the car, examining her closely. When he got back to Dean, he nodded. “If you were hoping to shock me, I’m sorry. I’m an Angel who specializes in the ridiculous or tough cases. This isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve seen.”

Dean laughed and threw an arm around Cas. “Just making sure, because Baby here is part of the family. If you’re going to be, then I needed you to understand just how serious me and Sammy take her. To most people, she’s just an old car, but to us, she’s been so much more. So what is the weirdest you’ve seen?”

“It’s one of the few times I’ve truly made a mistake,” Castiel said. “In my defense, it was an _extremely_ odd case. There was a woman whose soulmate was a photograph of the Eiffel Tower. I drew the obvious wrong conclusion that her soulmate was, in fact, the Eiffel Tower. Tracking down the correct photograph was much more difficult.”

“Wow. Okay. What was… you know what, never mind, not gonna ask,” Dean said. “Yeah. Okay. That’s weirder than mine.”

“Much.” Castiel turned to look back at Sam, and Sam gave up the pretense of not listening in and joined them at the car. “What happens now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I had some sort of clever explanation for Gabriel and his ponies. Sadly, the true explanation is that it amused me.


	4. What Happened Then

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And they all lived happily ever after?

“Cas? Sammy? Either of you around?” Dean shouted as he came in.

Cas came out of his study. “I’m here, Dean. Sam had to work late. Good timing, I was just going out to make sure everything’s ready in the stable. Gabriel will be here tomorrow with Honeybee.”

“Oh man, I’d forgotten about that,” Dean said. “Look, this is gonna sound really weird, and I know it’s sudden, but how would you feel about taking in a kid or two?”

“Is it one or two?” Cas asked with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s negotiable,” Dean said. “There’s this guy I work with at the garage, and him and his girlfriend were in a car wreck and the docs are skeptical about Lee’s chances. Lee, Bobby and I are pretty much all he had, so it was always assumed that if anything happened to him either Bobby or I would look after his girl Krissy. I don’t know about Lisa or her son Ben, but I know they were getting the kids used to the idea of being stepsiblings, so when Lee and Lisa started getting serious, Bobby and I both promised Lee we’d take care of Lisa and Ben, too. Ben’s twelve, Krissy’s ten.”

“In other words, Krissy is exactly the age where a girl should have a pony, and we just happen to have one coming to live here,” Castiel said. “Sam and I had actually decided to talk to you this weekend about the possibility of adopting a child. This arrangement, the three of us living out here, it’s working well and while we’d like to adopt, we didn’t want to risk running you off. What about Lisa, though?”

“They think she’ll pull through, but she was a yoga instructor and she’s gonna be facing a really long rehab time,” Dean said. “So if we can help her out by fostering Ben and Krissy, or just Krissy, until she’s ready to get back to her life or start building a new one, that ain’t nothing.”

“Were they soulmates?” Castiel asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Dean said. “Never asked. None of my business. But the way Lee would talk about her…”

“We’ll have to run it by Sam, but you’ve got my approval,” Castiel said. “I may have to ask Gabriel to bring me Guinea Pig if we end up taking in both kids so they can each have their own pony, though.”

“Gabriel named a pony Guinea Pig,” Dean said. Because obviously that was the most important thing to focus on.

“No. I named a pony Guinea Pig. I won her just before she was born, so Gabriel let me name her,” Cas said.

“You know if you give the ponies to the kids you can’t bet them with Gabriel, right?” Dean said.

Cas rolled his eyes. “Of course. There are others, and the fact that I’m up five should tell you something about my winning percentage. Guinea Pig and Honeybee are safe, and even if I did go on a losing streak, Gabriel won’t accept them as stakes anymore.”

“Five?”

“Five. Gabriel thought I would regret moving to Kansas after three months. I told him I’d make it six without any regrets at all, and if I did, I wanted to bring Honeybee to live with me.”

“And tomorrow’s six months since you moved out here,” Dean said. “Man, feels like you’ve been here years. Seriously, no regrets? None?”

“I miss being able to go to Balthazar’s bar most nights, but that’s not a regret,” Castiel said. “Aside from Balthazar, I didn’t really have much of anything in Detroit but memories, mostly bad. Out here, I have family. I can do my work just as well from here. And even Balthazar admits I was right about the purple on Sam’s mark… being out here, with him, it’s made me a better person.”

 

Lisa’s recovery was long, slow, tedious, and a year later, when she was ready to start her new life, she started it as a bookkeeper at Dean’s garage. The former one, Kaitlyn Turner, got killed in a car wreck in Omaha, and while Lisa had recovered enough to do yoga, she no longer felt comfortable teaching it to others when she just couldn’t bend certain ways herself.

She also started it with the Winchesters. Her relationship with Dean wasn’t romantic, but Lisa understood Dean like very few people had ever bothered to try and Dean felt protective of Lisa and loved the kids. A few years later, Lisa and Dean had two more kids – Bobby John and Leanne.

When Leanne’s soulmark presented, Lisa freaked out. A deep blue heart wrapped in crimson barbed wire with three golden drops falling from it. Castiel promised that as soon as Leanne was old enough he’d start the search, just like he’d done when he matched up Ben with Claire Novak and Krissy with Josephine Barnes and Aiden Dimarco, just like he’d promised to do for Bobby John. Sam just laughed and reassured her that it didn’t necessarily mean what it looked like, and he should know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's read/left kudos/commented! There are definite plans to add to this 'verse: at the very least, I want to write a Dean/Baby Date Night.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are my soulmate! <3


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